I am
surprised that this issue is still in question. When I was taught the preferred
teaching method was called “look see”. It relied on memory to read. I admit not
much works with boys and almost anything seems to work with girls. Girls have
more brain connections or something and they don’t seem as affected by fetal
alcohol. Or maybe girls figure out phonics on their own. In any case mom got
disgusted and got me a tutor who taught phonics. I had to do workbooks. Blue
birds were the lowest reading group in class. I moved from blue bird over red
bird to yellow bird and never looked back.
I’ve already
posted about reading aloud and using grids rather than flash cards. But
ignoring the phonetic basis of written English is perverse. Later Sesame Street
seemed to have settled the issue and I was relieved.
I didn’t
realize the nonsense was back. Now it is called “whole language”. Children are
supposed to use the “language of context” to somehow intuit words rather than
sounding them out. I admit when you currently read you are unaware of any
underlying phonics process. But it is ridiculous to expect someone to master
the quantity of knowledge required without the tool that will give you that
knowledge.
Why do
teachers hate phonics? What is there about the process that is so distasteful
to them? It is the pain and suffering buried in the construction of English.
Each inconsistency contains history. If you actually look at the language, as
children do, the stench of barbarism, wickedness and conquest seeps out.
Teachers
don’t want to explain the Phoenician empire wiped out by the Romans over
infanticide. The conquests by Rome and the Normans. Billy the Bully. The
slaughters and famines brought by empires. Slavery. Serfdom. The English empire
itself. The language of the oppressor.
Q-Where did
English come from?
A-People
killing and starving each other.
Q-Why don’t
the words follow the rules?
A-We used to
talk like that and kept the spelling.
Q-Why do
people talk funny?
A-They want
to be special.
A-Just like
the playground. Good guys sometimes lose. People aren’t the same.
Teachers are
pushing the “language of context” to avoid discussing the context of language.
If your
little darling is having trouble, there’s lots of phonics YouTube videos. If
they still have trouble, get rid of the televisions, they will learn to read. Everybody
needs stories.
If you know
how to read and write, you can escape.
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